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Big Loss for Toll Brothers, but It’s Raising Prices Now

Toll Brothers, the largest American builder of luxury homes, reported a wider loss for its third quarter as the recession weighed on sales. The company said Thursday that it had begun to raise prices as the market showed signs of recovery.

The net loss for the three months ended July 31 swelled to $472.3 million, or $2.93 a share, from $29.3 million, or 18 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The loss, which included tax charges and write-downs of $554 million, was greater than analysts’ estimates.

A recovery may be getting under way in the housing market after a slump that started in 2006. Prices rose in 18 of 20 American cities in June, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index. The cancellation rate for Toll’s homes in the quarter fell to the lowest level since the beginning of the economic contraction.

“We are fairly well convinced that the bottom has been turned and therefore we are not increasing incentives or lowering prices anywhere,” Robert I. Toll, chief executive of the company, said in a conference call with investors and analysts. The company has raised prices in about 40 percent of its developments and the rest are seeing “price stability,” Mr. Toll said.

The builder was expected to report a loss of $1.28 a share, according to the average estimate of 13 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Revenue fell 42 percent, to $461.4 million, from $796.7 million in the period a year earlier.

Home builders like Toll Brothers have struggled to weather the biggest collapse of demand for new homes on record. Sales of new homes probably will fall to 353,000 this year, the lowest in data going back to 1963, according to a forecast on the National Association of Realtors Web site.